The Dark Side Has All The Cookies
by Imladviel
Summary: most unoriginal title ever, sorry , Lara Jade is her name, Sith is her game, and this takes place in the Clone Wars era on Coruscant. The Padawan of a corrupt Jedi Master embraces the Dark Side, and learns evil has its rewards...


**The Dark Side Has All the Cookies**

Coruscant had glorious pieces of architechture, such as the Jedi Temple, where Lara Jade had been appointed Padawan to Master Iblis, years ago, when she still believed everything she was taught. Seeing Master Iblis lose his own lightsaber in a game of Sabacc was when she realized there was more to the Force than the Jedi taught, and she belonged on the other side.

If Master Iblis, probably the most corrupt Jedi Master in history, not that anyone except Lara Jade knew this, unless Yoda did, hadn't confiscated Lara's Practice Lightsaber, officially property of the Jedi Temple because he hadn't given Lara permission to construct her own yet, and begun to use it as if it were his personal weapon, completely forgetting his promise that he'd give it back as soon as she'd memorized an ancient text about midi-chlorians, and then his more practical promise that he'd give it back as soon as he'd acquired the necessary ingredients to construct himself a new lightsaber…

Then perhaps things would have happened differently. Perhaps Lara Jade would never have taken to slipping off to see the less glorious sides of the Coruscant architechture. But she was, guite simply, mad as a mistreated Nek, and she couldn't tell anyone about the injustice… because the cunning of Iblis had made sure Lara Jade could never tell anyone how corrupted he was. He knew about her crush on Anakin Skywalker, and he would, quite simply, tell Anakin about it on some unfortunate moment if Lara didn't know her place and behave herself, which meant doing whatever Iblis told her to. No task was so demeaning, no injustice so vulgar, that it would make Lara want Anakin to know she existed. Anakin was a celebrity. And having crushes on celebrities was just plain silly. Why not crush on Eden Vector while she was at it? Or someone else equally legendary, young, handsome, and impossible to attain? Besides, she was a Jedi, she was not allowed any crushes at all. Anakin the Boy Wonder would pity her. Or even worse, laugh.

Lara Jade knew her place. She was good at Soresu, especially the Blaster Block moves, and bad at basically anything else you could do with a lightsaber. She had the same force abilities any other Padawan her age might have. She had a talent for languages but no head for maths, which made her useless as a pilot unless she had access to a droid. She knew more about the force than Master Iblis, but so did things that lived on the bottom of ponds in her native Alderaan. In short, she was a 16-year-old Padawan, with no claim to fame. On Alderaan, she knew, because her mother sent her letters, which Master Iblis actually gave to her, the Mercier family were a power to be reckoned with, and someday the fortune would be hers, but her name wasn't Mercier, it was Jade. She'd always be 'the adopted heir', as newsfeeds called her.

Lara Jade had done research in the Senate Library. There were 38 human and 5 non-human families in the galaxy that had the name Jade as their surname, or what passed for surname in their culture. 14 of the human families were chronicled long enough to determine the name had originated in an ancestor or several working in the gemstone industry, on any level from miner to sculpture artist. This was logical, since in Galactic Basic, the word 'jade' meant a green gemstone, a fairly popular one on Alderaan. In other languages it meant other things, from 'a type of board game most commonly played by female Rodians' to 'a swearword of unknown meaning in the language of the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine'. There had not been a known Jade family on Alderaan, Lara's planet of birth, at least officially, for thousands of years. The existing human Jades, all different families, now lived on over three hundred worlds, and that was not counting the moons. And if you counted all the people who had Jade as some part of a longer surname, you'd need a droid to count the planets, because Lara Jade's maths ran out on her at that point.

'This child owns the name Lara Jade and nothing else.' She still had the blanket – another benefit from having a corrupt master who allowed parcels from home. Other Padawans complained of how they were told to forget their past and not keep in touch with their non-Jedi relatives until their training was complete. Iblis had his good points. He was a follower ot the Unifying Force theory, and forever trying to find a way to cheat in Sabacc by means of the Force_ while playing against other Force Sensitives _of unknown alignment and reputation. But he also didn't particularly care what his Padawan did while he was busy with a game, which could take weeks.

So one afternoon 32 Coruscant days ago Lara Jade had sneaked away, once again, to hang at a disreputable tavern for the cheap kind of space pilots who didn't ask too many questions about their cargo. She knew the place, having raided it for smuggled spice on the second day of her apprenticeship to master Iblis. Raided it, not helped raid it, because Master Iblis hadn't really done much. At almost-but-not-quite-14, Lara Jade had already been good enough at Blaster Block to take on three amateur smugglers at the same time. It had been a glorious victory for the Jedi Order, for which master Iblis had taken all the credit, much to Lara's relief. She'd been terrified for the first three seconds, and there should be no fear in the Force. She was afraid someone would find out she was letting her emotions get the better of her. That was how the descent to the dark side began. Emotions, crushes, letters from home…

And then, the words of a stranger in that disreputable tavern, his features hidden in a black hood, his voice that of a human male: 'The Jades serve the Sith. It has always been so. The Dark Side is strong in the Jades. They never become Masters... but they do other things... things no Master would dare attempt.' And no matter how many drinks Lara Jade bought him, he refused to say more on the subject. Of course, no noblewoman of Alderaan, nor a Jedi Padawan for that matter, should believe what a stranger told her in such a place, especially a drunk stranger, but Lara Jade sensed in the core of her being he spoke the truth. And she sensed that these Jades he spoke of, who were not among any of the families shown in the library records as far as she could determine, were the ones she belonged to.

The words became her credo, replacing all Jedi mottoes. She was slipping onto the dark side. And today she was headed to Shatta the Hutt's Merchant Alley. It was, in fact, a single large room close to the lost surface of Coruscant. On some evenings of the week it was a tavern, on others a Sabacc den, on certain dates of the Wookie calendar it was an unofficial temple for a forbidden cult, and whenever the Twi'lek twins known only as the Agony Aunts won big in a Sabacc table, they established a lavish brothel until their money ran out, which it invariably did because Shatta the Hutt charged more rent than they could earn with whatever non-human females they'd gathered to work for them. Officially, and also in reality during the daytime business hours, it was rented on a hourly basis to merchants who wished a neutral and secretive location to ply their wares, either to specific invited clients or to those who could be trusted with the knowledge by means of word-by-mouth.

Today, so one of Iblis' gambling partners had let slip when he once again forgot Padawans were not a type of non-vocal droid or an item of furniture, there would be an illegal lightsaber merchant. Iblis had been too lazy to attend, so, little doubting his student's loyalty, and with a little gentle persuasion from Lara Jade, which didn't even require any mindtricks, not that she'd have known how to do them if it had, he had given Lara what he thought a good basic lightsaber would be worth, in untraceable credit. Her mission was to buy him a lightsaber, and in return he'd give her back the one that was rightfully hers to use until she built her own and had to return it to the Temple.

Lara Jade promised she'd do this. She was now pressing the soundless doorbell. A voice spoke, in Hutt, from behind a metal grille: "What do you want? Tavern's not open for hours."  
"I've been sent by Iblis Cello. He wishes to purchase something from your current tenant." Lara answered, in fluent but accented Hutt.  
The door opened. "Iblis Cello is not a name respected in these parts, young lady", a Twi'Lek male told her.  
"His credit is as good as anyone's, he won a game yesterday." Lara pointed out.

She was allowed to enter the inner sanctum. The room was large, but built so that there was no acoustics to speak of. Whispers at one end would not be heard in another. And towards one end, there was a small table, behind which stood a thirty-something human male. Lara was relieved. At least the merchant would speak Basic.  
'I go straight to business. I don't need to know your name and you don't need to know mine. I sell things. You're here to buy. No one else needs to know any trade took place. No contract will be signed, and the credit has to be in material form, not in any shape of an I.O.U. The man told her, in a slightly bored tone.  
'Naturally. And I will forget your face. It is not very memorable, as far as faces go, anyways.' Lara Jade promised the man in honeyed tones.  
He laughed. 'Ahh, to be young and arrogant again! Your face, I will remember for the rest of my life, but no one will ever hear me describe your features. Which is a pity, because they're worthy of a poem, a sonnet, a song with cymbals and flutes in.'  
Lara Jade smiled at him, the smile sharks give to dolphins. A Corellian, judging by accent and manner. This would be easy. He thought she was as old as she looked, old enough to be flirted with. He'd be easy to handle.

The man showed her many lightsabers. She had been given specifications by her Master, but she ignored them, choosing instead a weapon that suited her own hand best of all. 'May I turn it on? I'd hate to buy a droid in a bag, as my auntie used to say.' She suggested.  
'Of course. It's safe here. Point the blade away from me and make no sudden movements.' The man placed his hand on the blaster in his belt, but didn't pull it.  
'How much are you asking for this one?' Lara Jade inquired, once she'd seen the blue light flow from the handle perfectly and perform just as a good lightsaber ought to.  
The presumed Corellian named a price. They haggled for a moment, while Lara practiced various lightsaber moves without using the Force, a safe distance from his table. Then suddenly the lightsaber flew from her hand and beheaded the merchant. It could have been a throw, if the weapon hadn't then returned to her grasp. As the blood spilled an an alarm rang somewhere, Lara Jade left all the money she had with her, half of the absolute lowest price the merchant would have accepted, on the table beside his surprised-looking head. Then, showing considerable talent in blaster block, she made good her escape, with a long chase through the different layers of Coruscant, until, her pursuers either dead by their own blaster fire thrown back at them from the lightsaber blade, or having given up on the chase, not feeling whatever they were paid worth dying for, Lara Jade, a Sith in the flesh, a murderess, stood panting for breath on top of a tall Coruscant skyscraper. She wasn't sure what race the mercenaries had been, or if they worked for the weapon merchant or the Hutt, she wasn't sure if she'd killed any of them, and it wasn't important now.

What was important was that she felt more alive than ever before. This was the life. She could never go back to her Master now. Nor the Jedi Temple. In fact, within minutes there would be a bounty on the head of a woman of her description, probably estimated three years older, and named as 'a possible accomplice of the sabacc gambler Iblis Cello', which was the name Iblis used when he didn't want it known he was a Jedi Master. And yet, Lara Jade had triumphed. She had been true to her blood and done something her Master would never dare attempt. She'd acted against her better judgement and embraced the Dark Side of the Force, and now the Dark Side was embracing her, filling her with euphoria. But she had to rise over the tide.

Lara Jade hitched herself a ride by means of the real sign language for Galactic Hitchhikers, which has nothing to do with waving a towel around and everything to do with being female and without moral scruples, and left Coruscant on board an illegal vessel bound for a distant planet she'd never heard of. She'd switch ships, seduce captains, and threaten her way through when necessary, and keep running until she found herself a Sith Master.

Lara Jade knew her place. She wasn't ready to be her own master yet. There was so much to learn, and she'd have to start all over again in so many areas. But she'd made her claim to fame – and lost any chance of ever meeting Anakin Skywalker other than as an opponent in battle. It was worth it. It had been a childish crush, anyways. And the second captain to give her a freebie ride was Corellian and really cute.

'Join the Dark Side, it has all the cookies'. It was an old padawan joke, in bad taste as was usual for padawan jokes, but Lara Jade was learning that it was true in a very deep and metaphoric sense.


End file.
